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Whole grain

Whole grain foods are heart healthy. They are high-fiber, high-protein foods. It's obvious we should include more in our daily diet. Making the switch should be easy enough, souldn`t it? Choosing that grainy food at the grocery store relies simply on discipline so I guess it's not too difficult to toss the whole grain dry pasta into the shopping cart... but how does it taste?

A little while back I had bought "Catelli Healthy Harvest Flax Omega-3 Spaghetti" and it sat in our pantry for weeks. This past Sunday I decided to give it a go. I used Ragu sauce and doctored it up with canned tomatoes, italiano seasoning and frozen veggies (carrots, celery, onion, peppers). The pasta took much longer to cook than the regular stuff, but there was no hurry to eat. My first piping hot bite tasted fine, but as it cooled down to a reasonable eating temperature I didn't like the taste. Christian however loved it! He mopped it up and darn well near licked the plate clean. Impressive! Maybe it will just be an acquired taste for me... maybe.

I`ve found it relatively easy to choose to buy whole grain breads, pitas, tortillas & most recently english muffins. We all like it. Well, Christian is fine with everything except for those that noticeably have seeds in them. He refuses to eat the seeds in bread yet he loves sunflower seeds on their own. Hmm. I have found though that the pitas & tortillas are very thin. The pitas were really hard to open the pockets without tearing them apart and most of the tortillas cracked as I was rolling them for chicken wraps. I did discover this morning that if I fold the tortillas over, like a burrito, they hold together better. Problem solved!

In an attempt to learn what other whole grain foods we should be eating I googled a food list and among some of the common suggestions are bulger, buckwheat, millet, & quinoa. I have no idea what or how to use these! Maybe I should just stick to what I do know and take it slow. Maybe I will find a new recipe including one of these products and plan to make it with Christian. I`m sure he will like that.As you can probably tell I am really interested in molding ourselves to incorporate more whole grain foods into our diet. Both of Christian`s Grandfathers had heart attacks. It sure is a big reason to eat heart healthy. As parents we always want to protect our family and that`s just what I am trying to do by encouraging healthy eating habits. I am working on adjusting my grocery buying... we have almost used up all of our white rice so our next rice purchase will be brown rice or wild rice. We have a big container of oatmeal that I plan to start using in baking projects with Christian and the cereals currently in our pantry are whole grain. We are on track, but the goal is to stay on it.

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I was at the Bulk Barn last week and decided to try out one of their rice blends. It is Aztec Blend #1656. It includes colusari red rice, long grain brown rice, split peas, and amaranth. I had no idea what some of those ingredients were but figured anything's worth a try, right? When I got home I looked up colusari rice & amaranth. Colusari rice is a burgundy-colored chewy rice that has a light nutty-popcorn-like flavor and amaranth is actually an herb.

It was very simple to prepare & actually pretty good. The peas were a little crunchy which added nice texture. I was surprised that both kids really liked it.